Australian Federal Police seizures of illicit crystalline methamphetamine ('ice') 1998-2002: impurity analysis

Nineteen crystalline methamphetamine ('ice') seizures captured by the Australian Federal Police (AFP) at the Australian border between 1998 and 2002 were analysed. Using a modified gas chromatograph-mass spectrometry (GC-MS) impurity profiling approach of these samples we have identified >30 compounds associated with methamphetamine and/or its synthetic route. Major impurities detected include 1,2-dimethyl-3-phenylaziridine 8, dimethylamphetamine 14, N-formylmethamphetamine 24, N-acetylmethamphetamine 25, 1,3-dimethyl-2-phenylnaphthalene 32, 1-benzyl-3-methylnaphthalene 33 and methamphetamine dimer 34. These data are suggestive of ephedrine/pseudoephedrine as the main precursor of the 'ice' samples seized during 1998-2002. Additionally the two naphthalenes 32 and 33 further identified that 15 items in 9 seizures were produced via the more specific ephedrine/hydriodic acid/red phosphorus method. One sample comprised 75% dimethylamphetamine and 9.7% methamphetamine, representing the first Australian seizure of imported dimethylamphetamine reported.     

On Gratitude

In this review, I use Emmons and McCullough's excellent volume on gratitude as a platform for discussing several issues in emotion, cultural, and moral psychology. First I summarize this exceptionally rich edited book, which provides accessible reviews of the philosophy, theology, anthropology, sociology, evolutionary biology, and psychology of gratitude. I next take up four questions inspired by the book. First, I consider whether gratitude is an emotion, and how to operationally define emotions. Second, I discuss the cognitive components of gratitude, including the appraisal structure of gratitude and whether gratitude can occur without an attribution. Third, I take up the question of whether gratitude is indeed a positive emotion, and propose some complications in the nature of positive emotions. Last, I consider potential sources of individual, cultural, and religious differences in gratitude, such as whether gratitude is mostly about internal feelings or the fulfillment of social obligations.

Intimate partner violence and HIV/STD risk among lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender individuals

To date, there has been little research examining HIV/STD risk among lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) individuals who are in abusive relationships. This article uses data collected from a community-based organization that provides counseling for LGBT victims of intimate partner violence (IPV). A total of 58 clients completed the survey, which inquired as to sexual violence and difficulties negotiating safer sex with their abusive partners. A large percentage of participants reported being forced by their partners to have sex (41%). Many stated that they felt unsafe to ask their abusive partners to use safer sex protection or that they feared their partners' response to safer sex (28%). In addition, many participants experienced sexual (19%), physical (21%), and/or verbal abuse (32%) as a direct consequence of asking their partner to use safer sex protection. Training counselors on issues of sexuality and safer sex will benefit victims of IPV.     

The gendered time politics of globalization: of shadowlands and elusive justice

This paper seeks to bring a time perspective to the discourses of globalization and development. It first connects prominent recent gender-neutral discourses of globalization with highly gendered analyses of development, bringing together institutional–structural analyses with contextual and experiential data. It places alongside each other ‘First World’ perspectives and analyses of the changing conditions of people in the ‘developing’ world who are at the receiving end of globalized markets, and the international politics of aid. To date, neither of these fields of expertise has made explicit the underpinning time politics of globalization. Naturalized as status quo and global norm these temporal relations form the deep structure of globalization and its neo-colonialist agenda. The paper uses feminist epistemology to explicate the taken-for-granted time politics of globalization and time-based ontology to render visible the gender politics of globalization. The combined conceptual force makes connections where few exist at present, maps complex processes and traces naturalized relations. It offers not a new or better theory of… but an approach to globalization that makes transparent hitherto opaque relations of power and it identifies openings for change, resistance and alternative political practice.     

Schizophrenia as a cause of death

Schizophrenia is a chronic disorder that is associated with increased mortality. Although traumatic deaths account for most of this increase, there is also an increased rate of natural deaths in this population. Altered autonomic physiology in this group might contribute to death. To determine if there are schizophrenics in whom, after a complete autopsy, no recognizable cause of death other than schizophrenia is established, the records of the Office of Chief Medical Examiner of the City of New York were reviewed for deaths associated with schizophrenia and a natural manner of death. Six such decedents were identified, and their histories and autopsy results are described. We believe that schizophrenia per se is a potentially lethal disorder. Autonomic irregularities and their interactions with psychotropic drugs deserve further attention.     

Introduction Volume Two

Liverpool Law Review -